Former FB infra SWE here. Like any big company, it depends a lot on exactly where in FB you'd be. Contrary to what already seems to be a popular belief in this

Former FB infra SWE here. Like any big company, it depends a lot on exactly where in FB you'd be. Contrary to what already seems to be a popular belief in this thread, not every developer there is directly involved in implementing any of the "dark patterns" or whatever that the company is known for. Damn few, in fact. A tiny percentage. My impression is that on the front end most people are solving pretty generic problems with platforms, frameworks, and interfacing to some very complex back ends. On the infra side it's even less related to the nature of the business. It's generic database stuff, or generic OS stuff, or generic storage stuff, or whatever, only at very high scale. The social/moral issues do take their toll, both as pangs of conscience and the general unpleasantness of people acting like everything Facebook ever did was 100% predictably bad and you're personally responsible. There are also certain pathologies in how planning and evaluations and promotions work. On the other hand, the work is generally very interesting and the opportunities for learning/advancement are huge (though I'd caution that some of what you might learn is very FB-specific). Also, one on one, people at FB are generally very smart and quite nice. The managers in particular really Get It when it comes to supporting engineers. So a lot depends on how well you can "build that wall" between the work and the company as perceived from outside, or whether you even want to do that. P.S. Don't read anything into the fact that I'm "ex" because 90% of the reasons were specific to my own circumstances.